


The Season of Love and Death

by mustntgetmy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Autumn, Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, First War with Voldemort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustntgetmy/pseuds/mustntgetmy
Summary: A little love letter to autumn, Remus/Sirius style. From their first kisses at Hogwarts beneath the Forbidden Forest foliage, to sharing cups of cocoa in a London park near the end of the first war.





	The Season of Love and Death

**Author's Note:**

> Although this deals with the First Wizarding War and is canon compliant I did my absolute damndest not to have this end angstily, so have no fear.

The air turns, like this, overnight. Warmth streaming off in gusts, like steam blown off a cup of tea, the air crystalizing, cool, inhabiting that delightful sensation: crisp. Air he can feel on his tongue and tuck into the pocket of his cheek to savor later, air that puffs out white from their mouths in the early morning as they head to the greenhouses for Herbology, the sunlight thin through the greenhouse windows, the sky pearling over with thunderheads.

Storms blow in during the late afternoon and the fires are lit early. Outside the wind whips red and gold leaves against the tower windows, as inside blankets fluff out over laps, happy couples all caught in their own fireside glow. It makes it easy, this general sense of closeness, of everyone drawing in tight for warmth, to sidle up to Remus, to poke at a hole in his jumper and hold his hand under the pretense of making fun of him for being cold. The sun sets but it’s still early, so early for all of them in that red and gold glow, but especially for him and Remus. Seven or eight kisses and a hurried fumbling in the prefects’ bathroom and now here they are, navigating their way through gusts of tattered leaves and news of the coming war. For the moment, the leaves are the more pressing issue: one caught in Sirius’s hair that morning on the way to the greenhouses and Remus, so careful, brushed it away, glancing over his shoulder at the others like it was a secret he meant to keep between the two of them. Is it a secret, this, their hands warming side by side at the fire, all their knuckles going as ruddily red as their cheeks had in the bathroom, at the end, when they had both shuddered and gasped against each other? Or is it more than a secret, is it some bright, new thing, like the sun striking through the red leaf Remus had taken from his hair, exposing the startling finery of its veins? Sirius can’t tell, and he doesn’t want to, not yet. He nicks them both some cocoa from the kitchens and they sit in the Astronomy Tower until near midnight, the stars and moon obscured, their fingers laced, their cheeks going pink first from the autumnal wind and then, later, like the sun were striking through them, going red because of each other.

Two weeks later the chill unwound, became cold, fanned out into every nook in the castle walls, driving Sirius beneath the covers of Remus’s bed. “We could share,” he says, and it is the first time the concept occurs to him. Remus, who’s been watching more closely the gestures of the past month – the cupped blue flames they pass between each other’s palms whenever they’re outdoors, the one scarf they laughingly tied between them at the season’s first Quidditch match, the cocoa Sirius has been sneaking for them since October began – understands that they’ve already done a lot of that, and is wary of sharing more of himself, of giving all he has to give away and being left, when the leaves all blow away and the cold settles in permanently, with nothing. “It’s a bad time for this,” he says. “Bad luck to fall in love when everything is dying.”

“You said love!” Sirius says, and now there’s no getting rid of him. He burrows his nose into Remus’s neck, his fingers looping beneath Remus’s waistband, and anyway, the sun comes in the morning, perfect gold, overflowing the tops of the red-gold trees, and it wasn’t all that bad, sharing.

The leaves blow all away, the cold comes in to roost, white cedes to green, green cedes to heat, and then it’s October again, the two of them in a tiny flat, Remus flush with fever.

Sirius has knit himself into Remus bit by bit; neither of them are easy people to stay in love with, and this has been hard work, keeping hold of each other, even as everything else around them falls apart. Remus has been aware every step of the way of the difficulty of this, but up until now Sirius has been blind to it. It is a glorious autumn day, the wind a cool sigh, the park two blocks beyond their door, overripe with leaves to be run through, the still pond in the park’s center a mirror to the vibrant, changing colors and the gusty sky. He could go, take a walk, and have earned it – it will be his only day off all month, the war already holding him fast in its clutches. He could go, but Remus is ill, and he knows he is needed.

There are easier things than this, he knows. He is so young, he can have anyone he wants, as many as he wants, he can fritter all his nights away in different beds, spend his mornings sleeping and his afternoons as he pleases. He is too young for grocery lists, for well-stocked medicine and potions cabinets, for a partner who is indisposed one night in twenty-eight and who catches ill so easily. Remus leaves the door open, always tells him he’ll understand if he leaves, and there have been times his gaze has strayed to it, wondering, perhaps even longing, for what is on the other side.

But he has never done anything more than wondering. Because this is Remus, who makes the best cup of tea Sirius has ever had and who always separates out the crossword. Remus, who hums sometimes in his sleep, so sweetly and with abandon, and who always, no matter if they’ve rowed or not, links his ankle around Sirius’s when they sleep. Remus, who had gone with him into enemy territory, long after everyone else had given up hope, to look for Regulus. Remus, who had to hold him as he shook and accepted that Regulus was really gone. Remus, whose kisses always make him feel like he’s come in from the cold, red in his cheeks, tawny gold in his eyes, the taste of his breath something he always wants to tuck into his cheek and savor. Remus, who he loves.

So he locks the door behind him, and cracks the window to sniff at the chill air. Cuts up a pumpkin, adds ginger and lemongrass and the remains of their red curry, manages a soup and some cheesy toasts besides. Keeps it simmering until Remus blinks, wakes from his fever dreams, and grins blearily in his direction. “You’re here,” he says hoarsely, and it hurts Sirius, the surprise in his voice.

“‘Course,” he says on a huff, turning to the stove to hide his face. He ladles out the soup, sticks the toast on a tea saucer, and brings them to the bed.

“You cooked,” Remus says, still sounding surprised, because this is the first time this has ever happened.

“’Course,” Sirius says, though this time more tentatively, watching as Remus raises the spoon to his mouth.

“Oh,” Remus says, and the surprise in his voice this time around is much more agreeable. He goes in for another spoonful, and then another, his tongue darting out to lick at the corners of his mouth. “Well, then,” he says. “No more takeaway for me.”

Sirius laughs, steals a bite of toast, forgets his hurting and his worrying and tucks himself up against Remus, playing with his hair while he eats.

In the morning the sun is gone and the streets are mist-strewn and gloomy. Remus, his fever broken only hours before, disentangles them both from the blankets, buys a small bouquet at the grocer’s with the last of his savings while Sirius is in the shower, and when Sirius leaves the flat walks them over to the wizard’s cemetery hidden in one of London’s older corners. The Black crypt is there, but they tie the flowers to the gates, one for each year that Regulus had lived. Sirius touches the petals, marvels at their softness, knows that they too will fade. On the ground a leaf, brilliant orange, catches Remus’s eye. It is the last bright thing of a dying season, and he hands it to Sirius, who places it, very gently, into the bouquet. “Regulus,” he says, and nothing more. There can be no more words between them.

“Come on,” Remus says and they leave, the mist thinning out behind them. They walk through the park on the way to the store. There’s a long day ahead of them, and the sky is all gray, but the leaves roll bright underfoot, each footfall sinking in as if into carpet, their knuckles brushing every time they stop to stare up into the thinning boughs of the trees, their fingers warming each other’s.

Over the next days and weeks and months they isolate themselves from the war in the kitchen, Sirius at the helm with the cookbook, Remus with his sleeves rolled up, doing the prep. More soups and stews to warm them through the colder seasons, heaped with spices that makes the steam curl off their tongues, bright, crunchy foods come spring, edible flowers piled atop everything as Sirius’s garnish obsession reaches its peak, and then in summer the flowers falling away from the plates, fish and lemon washed back with icy beer, leftovers piled high in the back of the fridge papered with instructions for reheating, hardly a night now when they eat together. The war has crossed the threshold and is in their bed with them. They lay back to back, both awake, wondering where the other has been. Their friends are in hiding, and there is a secret placed in the sweat sticky space between them.

That year, the nights grow long but the heat never fades. The leaves turn from green to sickly brown, everything ending horribly. It looks like autumn but isn’t; the grayness is there, but so is the heavy heat. They leave the windows open into mid-October and wish for rain.

There is a row over who was meant to take out the rubbish, a pretense for arguing about other things. Remus, in the end, is the one who goes for the door, who takes a bag and slams it shut.

Sirius breaks all the tea cups, one by one, against the side of their small fireplace. He goes to a bar, almost brings someone home, and in the end winds up at the cemetery, crushing long dead flowers to his nose.

It finally rains and rains for days, and all sound is muted, washed away down the road and into the gutters. When it breaks it’s with the dawn, and the sun pours down at last, golden over the remaining leaves in the trees, gilding everything outside the window. Sirius goes for a walk, and sucks in deep lungfuls of air. It’s gone cool at last, and the taste of it is as heady as wine. He sits in a park, eyes closed, head tilted to the sun. He is planning to go into hiding soon, and he wants as much of the air as he can get in the meantime.

There come footsteps over the dead leaves; unexpectedly, and all the sweeter for being so, it’s Remus, with two takeaway cups of cocoa.

They sit on the same bench and drink in silence, the leaves fluttering in the intermittent gusts, each gliding down in their own time, slow and graceful.

“I’ve been thinking,” Sirius says, when they’ve been there long enough that the cocoa has gone and their breaths come out white. “About what you said about this being a bad time to fall in love. Because everything’s dying.”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s just…I suppose that’s true – Merlin knows I’ve seen my share of dying now – but it hasn’t only been that, has it?” He gestures at the park, the sky. “It’s been beautiful too.”

“Are we talking about the season? Or the war? Or –”

There is another row then, lighter than the last one, about the mixing of metaphors, but it ends quickly because Remus is only pretending not to understand, and because Sirius has taken his hand and he had forgotten just how nice that was, their hands together, warming each other up. He laces their fingers and loses the fight against a happy blush.

“Everything ends, Remus,” Sirius says, running a thumb along Remus’s cheek, his own cheeks beginning to turn red. “But not yet.”

“No,” Remus agrees, now, and many seasons later, when his hair is shot through with pearly gray and Sirius’s skin is as translucent as a leaf’s, when so much has happened and so much has changed but they still fit together in the exact same way, when they have reunited again. “Not yet.”


End file.
